Elias Khoury - As Though She Were Sleeping

I cannot put your words together to make any sense, he complained. Words come in groups, they make sense as a group. I mean, they come together in the head and when they come out as words they form a meaning. But you — is this how you always talk?

In the Hotel Massabki when Mansour opened his eyes the next morning he moved close to the woman lying on her side and put his arms around her. He felt her cold feet and snuggled even closer. Turning his body in toward her he laid his hands on her hips. Milia closed her eyes and went very still inside. Her joints felt limp and she went into something like a trance. She would say that she had dozed off and remembered nothing; but at the time he heard her say something he could not make out because it was only a low murmur. When he got up to go to the bathroom and was ducking the shower as it careened between steaming and icy, he thought suddenly of Najib and the red tracings on Milia’s neck. But he decided not to bring it up. It was not very elegant for a man to ask his wife about another man on her wedding day. He whistled in the shower and called to her to come in and join him, but when he came out of the bathroom he found her sleeping. She was lying on her back, as though she were floating atop the pillow in which her face and long hair were submerged. He drew close to awaken her. She opened her eyes as if coming out of a very deep sleep. She smiled at him, turned on her left side, pulled the cover over herself, and went back to sleep. Mansour lit a cigarette, sat down next to her on the bed, and waited for her to reawaken. But she did not. He dressed and went down to the hotel lobby looking for the dining room. The elderly Wadiia scurried toward him and asked if he wanted eggs with his breakfast.

No, that’s not necessary.

But eggs are good for newlyweds, Mr. Bridegroom, said Wadiia II, who was suddenly there, as if she had just walked out of the wall.

Whatever, that’s fine then, he said, and sat down.

Striding over to him, the bald-headed driver clapped him lightly across the shoulders. The two Wadiias brought coffee, milk, and fried eggs, which they set down on the table, straightening up to stand in wait obediently beside the driver. He said he wanted to return to Beirut immediately. Mansour took some money out of his pocket and held it out with a thank you.

Wallaah inta jada’, said the driver admiringly. A real brave man you are! Look, when I think about how you walked through that fog with the snow pelting down, I can feel the cold seizing me from my head to the soles of my feet! Leaves me feeling terrified. How were you not afraid? A lion, not just any young fellow getting married, a true lion!

Mansour said nothing. He noticed the sarcastic smiles pulling at the lips of the two hotel maids. He saw now that they were eerily identical. Yesterday Milia had remarked that they looked so alike it frightened her. That Wadiia II would be the exact image of Wadiia I if it weren’t for the sloping shoulders and bowed legs. Mansour hadn’t noticed anything yesterday evening. Everything in him had quaked with cold; his bones seemed to be coming apart and he needed a warm bed and the darkness of his closed eyes immediately.

Wadiia I came over to him and asked after the bride. Seconds later the same question echoed from Wadiia II. Same voice, same gesture.

Where is Khawaja George? asked Mansour. He did not know why all of a sudden he should be seeking the aid of the hotel proprietor in concealing his unease about this doubled female image before him.

The Khawaja is asleep. Waiting for you so long yesterday exhausted him, said the first.

The Khawaja is not well, said the second.

Mother and daughter, mused Mansour. Khawaja George Massabki had been very fortunate with these two women, because he had not had to alter anything in his life. The eternal single, as he always called himself. He had found the perfect solution in a woman whose daughter replicated her. It had all worked out so well. The woman was a servitor, which meant no demands, just silence and submission. And she was a widow, meaning she had no independent means of support. And she had a youngish daughter who was just like her, meaning that after he had supported the girl’s upbringing, now the two women were like twin rings on his finger and he could live well served and well loved. Now there’s a man, Mansour felt like saying, and he attacked the plate of fried eggs. He heard the padding of Milia’s feet on the floor. Lifting his eyes he saw her standing between the pair of Wadiias. She seemed taller than before as she spoke in a low voice with the two women. She sat down across from him. She raised her eyebrows and he sensed he ought to stop eating his eggs.

In the bathroom he had felt ashamed and humiliated. He had closed the door and tried to summon his mother because he was certain he would die. Only death destroys bodily desire. When that desire vanishes, death is certainly not far behind.

Nothing makes you cling to life like that does, declared the old man. All Mansour remembered of him was his thick head of very white hair. The man had come to their modest foundry and had bought a heap of iron rods. He said they were for the mujahideen high in the rocky hills. He gazed at Mansour’s brother, Amin, and said, If only youth would return one day! He said he knew his hour was near, because that gizmo — and he pointed between his thighs — no longer wanted it. And when it has lost the desire for it, that means it is commanding you to follow it into death. All Mansour could remember of the story were these strands of words. He had arrived as the man was preparing to leave, and so nothing stuck in his mind except this sentence — and now here it was, coming back to him along with the vomiting as his legs turned into jelly and pain blasted his inner organs. Death, he said to himself. This is death, and he cried out for his mother. He saw his mother lying on the ground, her thighbone broken, wailing for her own mother, who was dead. As if life is but a closed circle of mothers and nothing remains but the relationship binding child to mother — that is, to the child’s own death. When you call out Mama! you are summoning the grave, even if that is not what you think you are doing. A person’s life unfolds between two graves: the mother’s womb and the soil. Both places shelter you in that stage of becoming, preparing for the enormous transformations that will see you through the tunnel to the next life.

Who told him the tale of the two graves?

Milia? But no — Milia was happy now, with her rounding belly. She slept soundly, drank glass after glass of water, and acted as if her life had only now begun. Sister Milana, then — but Mansour had met the saintly woman only once, when she came to the church for their wedding, and that day he had not seen or heard anything. Had he seen the nun in a dream? But he did not dream. Or he did not remember his dreams.

Mansour would have liked to tell his wife about his experiences with women before getting married. But she did not want to hear. And then, why tell them, anyway? After all, his grand story had begun when his eyes fell on this woman and he attached himself to her without really knowing how. He had not understood what was happening to him or why every time he shut his eyes the curves of her lower body began to chase him. Milia bewitched him with the undulating line that ran from her waist downward. He saw her whiteness erupt beneath a white dress that flowered with a pattern of red cherries. He wanted to go up to her and say something but he did not dare. It took three long months for him to speak to her, when he noticed the dimple in her right cheek and her wide and langorous eyes.

Like cream, her beautiful skin dons

a veil of skin to shield her skin